All Colours Fade - Lost - Ethan/Juliet
Title: All Colours Fade
Pairing: Ethan/Juliet (hints of unrequited Ethan/Claire and Ethan/Charlie)
Word Count: 3664
Rating: PG-13
A/N: -looks at the pairing- Um. Yeah. I'm totally blaming this one on my flatmate and lenina20. Written using one of writing_rainbow's prompts. AU from when Juliet comes to the island.
Summary: Through the years, Ethan is the only one to keep Juliet anchored. Everything changes when Oceanic Flight 815 crashes and ruins their peace.
He's not her type.
She doesn't have a type, but if she did he wouldn't be it. He's too nice. Too friendly. Too normal. Nothing like her ex-husband. Nothing like Goodwin, who she can't stop smiling at even though she knows he's married.
It isn't Goodwin that comes to her door on the first morning she's staying here. She's still getting used to this house - her house - and she doesn't know if she'll ever settle in. This is not home and she misses her sister already. Badly, so badly. She doesn't think she'll last long here, not even with the challenges it provides for her professional mind.
She answers the door. It's sunny outside: it's beautiful. This entire island is so beautiful, from the few glimpses of it she's seen. The man on her doorstep smiles; he looks friendly. Gentle. It's a relief.
"Ethan," she says, happy to see a face from off the island. It's a drop of normality, even if there's nothing else normal about Ethan. She knows very little about him, about anyone. "Good morning."
"Good morning." He's cheerful, far too cheerful. "I thought I'd drop by and see how you are."
Everyone's so nice here, so attentive. She feels smothered already, but she answers, "I'm fine. Just getting settled in."
She invites him inside for breakfast because it seems like the polite thing to do - and she has always, always been polite. Her mother raised them well, her and Rachel. Ethan sits at her kitchen table and drinks her bad coffee and eats slightly burnt toast and fresh fruit and he talks about showing her around the island today. The highlights, he says.
"It really is beautiful here," Juliet murmurs as she stares mournfully out of the window at the bright crash of colours. Green grass and a cloudless blue sky.
"You've hardly seen anything yet," he tells her with a giddy smile, like a schoolchild. She wonders how old he is; it's hard to tell. He seems timeless, but not in the same way as his colleague - her colleague too, now - does, Richard. "You'll love it here, I promise."
"I hope so," and she smiles though she thinks she might break, though she's homesick and her sister's dying. The world is breaking but she smiles and smiles and smiles because it is the right thing to do, the polite thing to do.
He sits and drinks coffee, and she stares out of the window, and his presence is calming. He doesn't have to say anything, though the sound of his voice makes her situation seem better: seem manageable.
He's a surgeon, she discovers; she's a scientist. A doctor. Maybe this means they have something in common. Maybe it means nothing at all.
"Thank you," she says as they prepare to leave the house to go and explore. "It's nice to see a friendly face."
"All the faces are friendly here, Julie," he says, but she can tell by the way his smile widens that he takes her words to heart.
As they walk through the beautiful jungle - trees taller than she thought possible; leaves greener than she knew could exist in nature - she links her arm through his and they walk together, laughing like schoolgirls with plaits and scraped knees. Ethan has a nice laugh, a quiet one like he's ashamed that someone might hear. She likes listening to it.
Today is a good first day.
*
Three weeks into her time on the island, when she is sad and broken and lonely, he turns up on her doorstep with a pair of snorkels dangling from his fingers. He holds them up and asks, "Wanna come?" and she can't think of any reason to say no.
The ocean is delightful, absolutely perfect. If they advertised this place for tourists the beaches would be swarming within days. Juliet can easily imagine the brochures. She ties back her blonde hair and watches as Ethan paddles in the shallow part of the sea.
"I've never done this before," she tells him, looking down at the mask he's given her. It's hanging by its strap around her wrist.
He snaps his own mask on: it obscures his eyes and leaves him resembling a creature from a black and white horror movie. His smile is still there. "There's a first time for everything," he says.
He's full of stuff like that. Helpful sayings and platitudes. It's comforting, but sometimes Juliet thinks he says it so that he doesn't have to say anything real.
She moves towards the shore, pulling the mask tight over her eyes. She can feel the hot sun on her body, warming the skin that isn't covered by her bikini. The water is soothing and cool when it wraps around her ankles and she shivers, giggles. He takes her mouthpiece and guides it to her lips, showing her how to use it. His voice is good for instructing, simple and gentle without being patronising. Juliet thinks that, in another life, he could have been a teacher instead of a doctor; he could have lived in a friendly suburb of a busy city instead of on this isolated island.
They take off, and beneath the water, the island's beauties are magnified and strengthened. Corals and fish and crabs. The colours are so vibrant that it's like swimming in a rainbow. The snorkel is clunky and tastes like rubber and her blonde, wet hair keeps swimming in her way, but she feels like she could hide down here forever. Juliet remembers hiding in the bath when she was a child, closing her eyes and wishing she were a mermaid. This is that. This is just like that.
But she breathes wrong - chokes - feels water in her mouth, her throat, her lungs, and coughs. The snorkel leaves her mouth and tears sting her eyes but there are hands on her arms, guiding her upright. They breach the surface and Juliet coughs, chokes, while Ethan holds onto her upper arms and treads water for them both.
"You're okay," Ethan says. "You're okay, just breathe."
He's a good swimmer, much better than her, and he doesn't panic. It's like he was born here in the ocean, like it's the natural place to be for him. "Sorry," Juliet wheezes once she can talk again.
"Nothing to apologise for, Julie," he tells her. She'd correct her name, if he were anyone else. "Let's get back to shore. Are you okay to swim?"
She still doesn't feel okay, but she doesn't think that's because of her choking fit. It's because of everything else; it's because this feels like one more sign that she's not supposed to be here, like the island is trying to chase her away. She'd laugh if she could - maybe she's starting to think like the long-term residents of the island. You're going native, she thinks as she begins to swim to shore, gliding through the water with superficial ease. Ethan stays close to her the entire time, though she feels like she's slowing him down. She's not a bad swimmer, not by far, but in the water Ethan has a natural elegance that he's never had on land. He seems more at home here than with the earth beneath his feet.
They reach the shore, leaving the underwater world of coral reefs behind them. The green of the jungle rears ahead but Juliet stops on the beach, sitting down with a puff of air on the sand. Ethan follows her, a warm presence at her side, and she can feel him watching her: feel him worrying. It makes her smile, and though she knows that she shouldn't she leans over to him, bridging the gap between them until her lips brush against his mouth, both of them still wet from the ocean.
It lasts only a second before Ethan flinches away, his hands raised as if she'd drawn a gun on him. "Julie…"
She swallows. "It's Juliet, not Julie."
She wants to go back to her cottage; she wants to return to her sister.
Neither is an option. His hand reaches for her wrist and he holds on tightly, escape blocked off. "Juliet, you know I think you're a great girl, right? You're amazing. But Ben-"
"Screw Ben." And she isn't even interested in Ethan, not like that, not really, not now, but she's so fed up of living under the influence of other people, their disapproval always weighing on her back. It never stops; she never escapes. She brushes water from her face with her stubborn hands. They're not tears. She's not crying. She wouldn't. "Screw Ben," she mutters, quietly now.
She doesn't know what Ben has to do with anything - other than a vague sense that Ben has something to do with everything - but she knows the look in Ethan's eyes. It's pity and she's so fed up with people looking at her like that.
She should stop him when he kisses her.
She doesn't.
It is short and safe; comfortable. His arms encircle her and the sun beats down upon them, trying the salt water on their skin, and Juliet thinks, I could be happy like this.
It doesn't last.
On the island, nothing does.
*
There is a plane crash, a great rattling thing that makes the island shake in a way that chills Juliet's blood. Three years have passed and she is still here, still stuck here, always. The island is where she lives and Ethan's arms are where she sleeps but this will never, ever be her home.
When Ethan is stripped from her side and sent to the beach, his eyes connect with hers and they both know why: she feels it in the pit of her stomach, a gnawing sense of dread.
"He's our surgeon," she tells Ben once she finds herself alone with him. "What if something happens to him?"
Ben stares at her with a blank expression in his eyes, utterly unreadable - alien. There's nothing human about him.
"You're a doctor too," he answers. His mouth twitches. "I suppose you'll have to step up while he's gone."
"I'm a fertility doctor. This isn't… I'm not qualified for this. I'm not." And she doesn't want to be - she wants Ethan to be here, in camp, where he belongs. If she has to, she'll take his place with the survivors' instead.
Ben doesn't flinch. "Then I'd guess you'd better hope nothing happens to Ethan."
He doesn't sound sincere, not at all, and Juliet's face remains blank, emotionless as she tries to stare him down. He doesn't even blink and she turns to leave the room; turning her back on him, as she has so many times before.
*
"And she's pregnant?" Juliet whispers. "You're sure?"
He nods, crouched in the jungle with her. They shouldn't be doing this; she shouldn't be here. It's dangerous.
"I'd say she's in her third trimester. Shouldn't have been flying."
It's pure bad luck that she was; a plane crash would have been bad enough for a pregnant woman, but a plane crash onto this place is simply cruel. Juliet doesn't know how it will affect the baby. There's a part of her, a cold and scientific part, that is thrilled. This will allow them to see how it works, if it's a problem with conception on the island or gestation or birth. A scientific experiment - but there is a real woman and a real baby at risk here.
"What do you think we should do?" Juliet asks Ethan, though she knows it's her call. She's the expert in this field, not Ethan. He watches her questioningly and doesn't offer any answers himself; he holds her hand, waiting. "I'll speak to Ben about it."
"Tell him I'll have his list soon," Ethan says.
"How's it going with the list anyway?" Juliet asks. She doesn't understand this, even after three years. Maybe that's why she wasn't allowed to go instead of Ethan or Goodwin.
Ethan shrugs half-heartedly. "There are a few candidates. The girl; a musician; a conman and a convict."
Juliet blinks. "Those are some odd choices." Odd, varied, inexplicable. Sometimes she has to reassure herself that Ben knows what he's doing; she doesn't have the blind faith in him that most residents of the island seem to possess. Whenever she's tried to ask Ethan about it, he smiles mysteriously and talks of Jacob and only Jacob.
"Trust me," he tells her.
"I do. Always." She squeezes his hand, holds it, and wishes that he were back at the Barracks. "Hurry home. My bed's cold at night."
He smiles, the crow's feet around his eyes deepening in delight. "Try sleeping in one of the tents on the beach. They're hell on the back."
"You like it there," she accuses, even though she's smiling at him. She can see it in his face, in the way he talks about some of the people there. Claire, Charlie, Sawyer, Kate.
"They're good people." He nods. "I think we can help them."
Help them do what? she thinks, but she doesn't ask.
He wouldn't tell her.
"I think Goodwin likes his side too," she says mournfully. She misses Goodwin more than she'd expected to; she doesn't know him well, but he's nice. He's friendly - and having him around keeps Harper's claws under control. She's been wickeder than ever since he's been gone, striking all within reach with her poison tongue. "He's got a list already."
It's not supposed to be a challenge or a putdown, but she can tell from the way that Ethan flinches that it sounds like one to him. She keeps his hand in hers and holds on tightly, clinging onto him.
"Take your time," she reassures him. "Be certain - and be safe. These people are frightened; they're looking for a scapegoat."
"I know what I'm doing, Julie," he promises her, with a smile that is far more confident than it ought to be. She leans in to kiss it away, her fingers stroking over his jaw as she wishes that she could keep him trapped here in the jungle with her forever. Her eyes close, and with his lips against hers she almost feels peaceful.
Only almost. Only ever almost.
He pulls away and looks over his shoulder. "I should head back," he says. "Someone might notice I'm gone."
"Same here," she says. She feels certain that the others must already know that she comes out here to visit him, but nobody has said anything yet. She fears the day that Ben pulls her aside and tries to ban her from doing so; she doesn't fear Ben himself, but she fears for her own ability to stick to those rules. "See you tomorrow?"
He smiles and nods, before his hand slips out of her grasp and he begins to return to the beach. His body language changes as he walks; he becomes the character that he is playing for this deception. She watches him until the trees swallow him up and she can't see him any more; she only feels jealous of the survivors who get to spend time around him when she can't.
*
He's been distracted ever since he got back - with Claire, just Claire, and heavy guilt on his shoulders. "I didn't have a choice," Ethan tells her when she helps him to clean away any blood from his short fight with the beach's doctor. "They were checking the flight manifest. They were going to find out who I was."
She doesn't tell him that she's glad that he's there; Goodwin died because of his task. Ethan came close to it too. How can they continue to trust Ben now?
"You did the right thing," Juliet assures him. "We can help Claire now."
He's barely even listening to her; she can tell. She wets her cloth in the sink and wrings the excess water away before she returns to his side, sitting on one of the beds in their medical hatch. He doesn't flinch when she starts to dab at the dried blood on his torn knuckles.
"Have they found out what happened to Charlie yet?" he asks, looking up at her; his eyes are far more concerned than they ought to be.
She knows from experience that he's a softie for lost causes - and Charlie Pace is a lost cause if ever she saw one.
"Shephard and Austen found him in time," she says. "He'll live."
She pretends not to notice the way he sighs in relief. Too close. He's got too close; it's good that he got out while he did. He might have switched sides otherwise; she might have lost the only person that she can stand on this island, the only friend she's got.
Finishing washing his hands, she turns away to place the cloth in the sink to be cleaned later. When she turns around again, Ethan is watching her patiently. "What happens now?"
"I have to run some rests on Claire," Juliet says. Her mind buzzes with things that need to be done, information she needs to find out, and she is glad to have something there to focus on. Their lives, as imperfect and crushing as they were, are mutating into something new and something different. Her expression is impassive and she shows no fear. "Then we can decide what needs to be done."
"I can do the tests," Ethan volunteers.
Juliet nods; she doesn't question his motives. She doesn't think she'll like the answer. "It'll probably help if she has a familiar face to interact with," she agrees.
With the drugs they'll have the woman on it probably won't matter, but she offers Ethan the justification anyway: just in case Ben asks, which he will. Ben is exceptionally fond of putting Ethan on the spot. He has been for the past three years.
"It must have been scary for her," Ethan murmurs, almost to himself. "Flying alone while pregnant."
Juliet doesn't respond to that. What is there to say? Should she remind him that Claire is a young girl - soon to be a young mother if all goes well - and that Ethan ought to know better than to get attached like this? Should she tell him that it's downright rude to talk in that tone about another woman to the one you've been fucking on a regular basis for a year?
She holds her tongue. She meets his eyes. She says, "Charlie's in love with her."
That shuts him up, for now, but she knows it won't last. The crash has made her patched-together life explode into fragments; she can feel it all slipping out of her control by the second.
*
They kill him, like Ben knew they would, like Juliet knew too.
He's buried without ceremony by the very man who killed him. Juliet watches from afar, her eyes tracking the small blond man on the beach. It seems illogical that he could take Ethan from the world, could cut away at her lifeline and leave her more trapped and stranded than ever. He's nothing, nothing at all - and though Juliet should know from herself that it's always the ones that look like nothing who are the most dangerous of all, she feels resentful. Ethan deserved more.
"I want to go back and get his body," she tells Ben that night.
In the warm safety of his kitchen, he stares at her like she's speaking a foreign language. "He's been buried, Juliet. It's done."
"Not by us." She thinks of Alex, angry and confused upstairs in her bedroom, mourning a man who had been like an uncle to her and who had died for no real reason. "We need to say goodbye. Alex needs to say goodbye."
"And she can," Ben says. "Here. We don't need a body for that. I wouldn't have thought of you as being so attached to the flesh and bones of a man."
Perhaps that's supposed to be a barb, but Juliet's found that her skin grows thicker with every day she spends on the island. If the island is a healing place then it has healed her weak heart a thousand times over. Nothing will break her now, least of all him.
"He stays buried," Ben says, like a prophet declaring God's word. "It's for the best."
She doesn't cry, though tears prickle at her eyes like they always do. Death is swallowing their existence and she thinks Ben doesn't even care.
She leaves his house without ceremony or goodbye and once she's outside she stands on the grass and counts the stars. Looking up at the sky, there are clouds and the moon is bright where it peaks out behind them. She could never see the sky like this or the stars when she was on the outside world; she doesn't think that's enough compensation. In the dark the colours of the island are dull and muted. She can't remember the vibrant green beneath her feet or the sparkling blue of the ocean.
With an emotionless smile, she realises that she hasn't been snorkelling in years.
She doesn't believe in an afterlife; there is no heaven to reassure her. Ethan is gone and buried and with him she thinks any hope of escape or happiness has gone too. Her arms cross tightly over her chest and she wishes that she could rewind time and fix this, fix whatever went wrong; she'd never drink the orange juice and never get on the submarine. Never come to the island and never draw Ethan to her side. Never risk Ben's jealousy. Never watch a plane crash; never kidnap an innocent girl; never feel her morals wash away day by day; never wonder if she's even human any more.
She wants to run; she wants to sleep; she wants to cry.
She goes back to her house. She bakes cupcakes and tries not to think of Ethan, tries not to think of anything at all.
Pairing: Ethan/Juliet (hints of unrequited Ethan/Claire and Ethan/Charlie)
Word Count: 3664
Rating: PG-13
A/N: -looks at the pairing- Um. Yeah. I'm totally blaming this one on my flatmate and lenina20. Written using one of writing_rainbow's prompts. AU from when Juliet comes to the island.
Summary: Through the years, Ethan is the only one to keep Juliet anchored. Everything changes when Oceanic Flight 815 crashes and ruins their peace.
He's not her type.
She doesn't have a type, but if she did he wouldn't be it. He's too nice. Too friendly. Too normal. Nothing like her ex-husband. Nothing like Goodwin, who she can't stop smiling at even though she knows he's married.
It isn't Goodwin that comes to her door on the first morning she's staying here. She's still getting used to this house - her house - and she doesn't know if she'll ever settle in. This is not home and she misses her sister already. Badly, so badly. She doesn't think she'll last long here, not even with the challenges it provides for her professional mind.
She answers the door. It's sunny outside: it's beautiful. This entire island is so beautiful, from the few glimpses of it she's seen. The man on her doorstep smiles; he looks friendly. Gentle. It's a relief.
"Ethan," she says, happy to see a face from off the island. It's a drop of normality, even if there's nothing else normal about Ethan. She knows very little about him, about anyone. "Good morning."
"Good morning." He's cheerful, far too cheerful. "I thought I'd drop by and see how you are."
Everyone's so nice here, so attentive. She feels smothered already, but she answers, "I'm fine. Just getting settled in."
She invites him inside for breakfast because it seems like the polite thing to do - and she has always, always been polite. Her mother raised them well, her and Rachel. Ethan sits at her kitchen table and drinks her bad coffee and eats slightly burnt toast and fresh fruit and he talks about showing her around the island today. The highlights, he says.
"It really is beautiful here," Juliet murmurs as she stares mournfully out of the window at the bright crash of colours. Green grass and a cloudless blue sky.
"You've hardly seen anything yet," he tells her with a giddy smile, like a schoolchild. She wonders how old he is; it's hard to tell. He seems timeless, but not in the same way as his colleague - her colleague too, now - does, Richard. "You'll love it here, I promise."
"I hope so," and she smiles though she thinks she might break, though she's homesick and her sister's dying. The world is breaking but she smiles and smiles and smiles because it is the right thing to do, the polite thing to do.
He sits and drinks coffee, and she stares out of the window, and his presence is calming. He doesn't have to say anything, though the sound of his voice makes her situation seem better: seem manageable.
He's a surgeon, she discovers; she's a scientist. A doctor. Maybe this means they have something in common. Maybe it means nothing at all.
"Thank you," she says as they prepare to leave the house to go and explore. "It's nice to see a friendly face."
"All the faces are friendly here, Julie," he says, but she can tell by the way his smile widens that he takes her words to heart.
As they walk through the beautiful jungle - trees taller than she thought possible; leaves greener than she knew could exist in nature - she links her arm through his and they walk together, laughing like schoolgirls with plaits and scraped knees. Ethan has a nice laugh, a quiet one like he's ashamed that someone might hear. She likes listening to it.
Today is a good first day.
*
Three weeks into her time on the island, when she is sad and broken and lonely, he turns up on her doorstep with a pair of snorkels dangling from his fingers. He holds them up and asks, "Wanna come?" and she can't think of any reason to say no.
The ocean is delightful, absolutely perfect. If they advertised this place for tourists the beaches would be swarming within days. Juliet can easily imagine the brochures. She ties back her blonde hair and watches as Ethan paddles in the shallow part of the sea.
"I've never done this before," she tells him, looking down at the mask he's given her. It's hanging by its strap around her wrist.
He snaps his own mask on: it obscures his eyes and leaves him resembling a creature from a black and white horror movie. His smile is still there. "There's a first time for everything," he says.
He's full of stuff like that. Helpful sayings and platitudes. It's comforting, but sometimes Juliet thinks he says it so that he doesn't have to say anything real.
She moves towards the shore, pulling the mask tight over her eyes. She can feel the hot sun on her body, warming the skin that isn't covered by her bikini. The water is soothing and cool when it wraps around her ankles and she shivers, giggles. He takes her mouthpiece and guides it to her lips, showing her how to use it. His voice is good for instructing, simple and gentle without being patronising. Juliet thinks that, in another life, he could have been a teacher instead of a doctor; he could have lived in a friendly suburb of a busy city instead of on this isolated island.
They take off, and beneath the water, the island's beauties are magnified and strengthened. Corals and fish and crabs. The colours are so vibrant that it's like swimming in a rainbow. The snorkel is clunky and tastes like rubber and her blonde, wet hair keeps swimming in her way, but she feels like she could hide down here forever. Juliet remembers hiding in the bath when she was a child, closing her eyes and wishing she were a mermaid. This is that. This is just like that.
But she breathes wrong - chokes - feels water in her mouth, her throat, her lungs, and coughs. The snorkel leaves her mouth and tears sting her eyes but there are hands on her arms, guiding her upright. They breach the surface and Juliet coughs, chokes, while Ethan holds onto her upper arms and treads water for them both.
"You're okay," Ethan says. "You're okay, just breathe."
He's a good swimmer, much better than her, and he doesn't panic. It's like he was born here in the ocean, like it's the natural place to be for him. "Sorry," Juliet wheezes once she can talk again.
"Nothing to apologise for, Julie," he tells her. She'd correct her name, if he were anyone else. "Let's get back to shore. Are you okay to swim?"
She still doesn't feel okay, but she doesn't think that's because of her choking fit. It's because of everything else; it's because this feels like one more sign that she's not supposed to be here, like the island is trying to chase her away. She'd laugh if she could - maybe she's starting to think like the long-term residents of the island. You're going native, she thinks as she begins to swim to shore, gliding through the water with superficial ease. Ethan stays close to her the entire time, though she feels like she's slowing him down. She's not a bad swimmer, not by far, but in the water Ethan has a natural elegance that he's never had on land. He seems more at home here than with the earth beneath his feet.
They reach the shore, leaving the underwater world of coral reefs behind them. The green of the jungle rears ahead but Juliet stops on the beach, sitting down with a puff of air on the sand. Ethan follows her, a warm presence at her side, and she can feel him watching her: feel him worrying. It makes her smile, and though she knows that she shouldn't she leans over to him, bridging the gap between them until her lips brush against his mouth, both of them still wet from the ocean.
It lasts only a second before Ethan flinches away, his hands raised as if she'd drawn a gun on him. "Julie…"
She swallows. "It's Juliet, not Julie."
She wants to go back to her cottage; she wants to return to her sister.
Neither is an option. His hand reaches for her wrist and he holds on tightly, escape blocked off. "Juliet, you know I think you're a great girl, right? You're amazing. But Ben-"
"Screw Ben." And she isn't even interested in Ethan, not like that, not really, not now, but she's so fed up of living under the influence of other people, their disapproval always weighing on her back. It never stops; she never escapes. She brushes water from her face with her stubborn hands. They're not tears. She's not crying. She wouldn't. "Screw Ben," she mutters, quietly now.
She doesn't know what Ben has to do with anything - other than a vague sense that Ben has something to do with everything - but she knows the look in Ethan's eyes. It's pity and she's so fed up with people looking at her like that.
She should stop him when he kisses her.
She doesn't.
It is short and safe; comfortable. His arms encircle her and the sun beats down upon them, trying the salt water on their skin, and Juliet thinks, I could be happy like this.
It doesn't last.
On the island, nothing does.
*
There is a plane crash, a great rattling thing that makes the island shake in a way that chills Juliet's blood. Three years have passed and she is still here, still stuck here, always. The island is where she lives and Ethan's arms are where she sleeps but this will never, ever be her home.
When Ethan is stripped from her side and sent to the beach, his eyes connect with hers and they both know why: she feels it in the pit of her stomach, a gnawing sense of dread.
"He's our surgeon," she tells Ben once she finds herself alone with him. "What if something happens to him?"
Ben stares at her with a blank expression in his eyes, utterly unreadable - alien. There's nothing human about him.
"You're a doctor too," he answers. His mouth twitches. "I suppose you'll have to step up while he's gone."
"I'm a fertility doctor. This isn't… I'm not qualified for this. I'm not." And she doesn't want to be - she wants Ethan to be here, in camp, where he belongs. If she has to, she'll take his place with the survivors' instead.
Ben doesn't flinch. "Then I'd guess you'd better hope nothing happens to Ethan."
He doesn't sound sincere, not at all, and Juliet's face remains blank, emotionless as she tries to stare him down. He doesn't even blink and she turns to leave the room; turning her back on him, as she has so many times before.
*
"And she's pregnant?" Juliet whispers. "You're sure?"
He nods, crouched in the jungle with her. They shouldn't be doing this; she shouldn't be here. It's dangerous.
"I'd say she's in her third trimester. Shouldn't have been flying."
It's pure bad luck that she was; a plane crash would have been bad enough for a pregnant woman, but a plane crash onto this place is simply cruel. Juliet doesn't know how it will affect the baby. There's a part of her, a cold and scientific part, that is thrilled. This will allow them to see how it works, if it's a problem with conception on the island or gestation or birth. A scientific experiment - but there is a real woman and a real baby at risk here.
"What do you think we should do?" Juliet asks Ethan, though she knows it's her call. She's the expert in this field, not Ethan. He watches her questioningly and doesn't offer any answers himself; he holds her hand, waiting. "I'll speak to Ben about it."
"Tell him I'll have his list soon," Ethan says.
"How's it going with the list anyway?" Juliet asks. She doesn't understand this, even after three years. Maybe that's why she wasn't allowed to go instead of Ethan or Goodwin.
Ethan shrugs half-heartedly. "There are a few candidates. The girl; a musician; a conman and a convict."
Juliet blinks. "Those are some odd choices." Odd, varied, inexplicable. Sometimes she has to reassure herself that Ben knows what he's doing; she doesn't have the blind faith in him that most residents of the island seem to possess. Whenever she's tried to ask Ethan about it, he smiles mysteriously and talks of Jacob and only Jacob.
"Trust me," he tells her.
"I do. Always." She squeezes his hand, holds it, and wishes that he were back at the Barracks. "Hurry home. My bed's cold at night."
He smiles, the crow's feet around his eyes deepening in delight. "Try sleeping in one of the tents on the beach. They're hell on the back."
"You like it there," she accuses, even though she's smiling at him. She can see it in his face, in the way he talks about some of the people there. Claire, Charlie, Sawyer, Kate.
"They're good people." He nods. "I think we can help them."
Help them do what? she thinks, but she doesn't ask.
He wouldn't tell her.
"I think Goodwin likes his side too," she says mournfully. She misses Goodwin more than she'd expected to; she doesn't know him well, but he's nice. He's friendly - and having him around keeps Harper's claws under control. She's been wickeder than ever since he's been gone, striking all within reach with her poison tongue. "He's got a list already."
It's not supposed to be a challenge or a putdown, but she can tell from the way that Ethan flinches that it sounds like one to him. She keeps his hand in hers and holds on tightly, clinging onto him.
"Take your time," she reassures him. "Be certain - and be safe. These people are frightened; they're looking for a scapegoat."
"I know what I'm doing, Julie," he promises her, with a smile that is far more confident than it ought to be. She leans in to kiss it away, her fingers stroking over his jaw as she wishes that she could keep him trapped here in the jungle with her forever. Her eyes close, and with his lips against hers she almost feels peaceful.
Only almost. Only ever almost.
He pulls away and looks over his shoulder. "I should head back," he says. "Someone might notice I'm gone."
"Same here," she says. She feels certain that the others must already know that she comes out here to visit him, but nobody has said anything yet. She fears the day that Ben pulls her aside and tries to ban her from doing so; she doesn't fear Ben himself, but she fears for her own ability to stick to those rules. "See you tomorrow?"
He smiles and nods, before his hand slips out of her grasp and he begins to return to the beach. His body language changes as he walks; he becomes the character that he is playing for this deception. She watches him until the trees swallow him up and she can't see him any more; she only feels jealous of the survivors who get to spend time around him when she can't.
*
He's been distracted ever since he got back - with Claire, just Claire, and heavy guilt on his shoulders. "I didn't have a choice," Ethan tells her when she helps him to clean away any blood from his short fight with the beach's doctor. "They were checking the flight manifest. They were going to find out who I was."
She doesn't tell him that she's glad that he's there; Goodwin died because of his task. Ethan came close to it too. How can they continue to trust Ben now?
"You did the right thing," Juliet assures him. "We can help Claire now."
He's barely even listening to her; she can tell. She wets her cloth in the sink and wrings the excess water away before she returns to his side, sitting on one of the beds in their medical hatch. He doesn't flinch when she starts to dab at the dried blood on his torn knuckles.
"Have they found out what happened to Charlie yet?" he asks, looking up at her; his eyes are far more concerned than they ought to be.
She knows from experience that he's a softie for lost causes - and Charlie Pace is a lost cause if ever she saw one.
"Shephard and Austen found him in time," she says. "He'll live."
She pretends not to notice the way he sighs in relief. Too close. He's got too close; it's good that he got out while he did. He might have switched sides otherwise; she might have lost the only person that she can stand on this island, the only friend she's got.
Finishing washing his hands, she turns away to place the cloth in the sink to be cleaned later. When she turns around again, Ethan is watching her patiently. "What happens now?"
"I have to run some rests on Claire," Juliet says. Her mind buzzes with things that need to be done, information she needs to find out, and she is glad to have something there to focus on. Their lives, as imperfect and crushing as they were, are mutating into something new and something different. Her expression is impassive and she shows no fear. "Then we can decide what needs to be done."
"I can do the tests," Ethan volunteers.
Juliet nods; she doesn't question his motives. She doesn't think she'll like the answer. "It'll probably help if she has a familiar face to interact with," she agrees.
With the drugs they'll have the woman on it probably won't matter, but she offers Ethan the justification anyway: just in case Ben asks, which he will. Ben is exceptionally fond of putting Ethan on the spot. He has been for the past three years.
"It must have been scary for her," Ethan murmurs, almost to himself. "Flying alone while pregnant."
Juliet doesn't respond to that. What is there to say? Should she remind him that Claire is a young girl - soon to be a young mother if all goes well - and that Ethan ought to know better than to get attached like this? Should she tell him that it's downright rude to talk in that tone about another woman to the one you've been fucking on a regular basis for a year?
She holds her tongue. She meets his eyes. She says, "Charlie's in love with her."
That shuts him up, for now, but she knows it won't last. The crash has made her patched-together life explode into fragments; she can feel it all slipping out of her control by the second.
*
They kill him, like Ben knew they would, like Juliet knew too.
He's buried without ceremony by the very man who killed him. Juliet watches from afar, her eyes tracking the small blond man on the beach. It seems illogical that he could take Ethan from the world, could cut away at her lifeline and leave her more trapped and stranded than ever. He's nothing, nothing at all - and though Juliet should know from herself that it's always the ones that look like nothing who are the most dangerous of all, she feels resentful. Ethan deserved more.
"I want to go back and get his body," she tells Ben that night.
In the warm safety of his kitchen, he stares at her like she's speaking a foreign language. "He's been buried, Juliet. It's done."
"Not by us." She thinks of Alex, angry and confused upstairs in her bedroom, mourning a man who had been like an uncle to her and who had died for no real reason. "We need to say goodbye. Alex needs to say goodbye."
"And she can," Ben says. "Here. We don't need a body for that. I wouldn't have thought of you as being so attached to the flesh and bones of a man."
Perhaps that's supposed to be a barb, but Juliet's found that her skin grows thicker with every day she spends on the island. If the island is a healing place then it has healed her weak heart a thousand times over. Nothing will break her now, least of all him.
"He stays buried," Ben says, like a prophet declaring God's word. "It's for the best."
She doesn't cry, though tears prickle at her eyes like they always do. Death is swallowing their existence and she thinks Ben doesn't even care.
She leaves his house without ceremony or goodbye and once she's outside she stands on the grass and counts the stars. Looking up at the sky, there are clouds and the moon is bright where it peaks out behind them. She could never see the sky like this or the stars when she was on the outside world; she doesn't think that's enough compensation. In the dark the colours of the island are dull and muted. She can't remember the vibrant green beneath her feet or the sparkling blue of the ocean.
With an emotionless smile, she realises that she hasn't been snorkelling in years.
She doesn't believe in an afterlife; there is no heaven to reassure her. Ethan is gone and buried and with him she thinks any hope of escape or happiness has gone too. Her arms cross tightly over her chest and she wishes that she could rewind time and fix this, fix whatever went wrong; she'd never drink the orange juice and never get on the submarine. Never come to the island and never draw Ethan to her side. Never risk Ben's jealousy. Never watch a plane crash; never kidnap an innocent girl; never feel her morals wash away day by day; never wonder if she's even human any more.
She wants to run; she wants to sleep; she wants to cry.
She goes back to her house. She bakes cupcakes and tries not to think of Ethan, tries not to think of anything at all.